Latest news with #UncommonFavor
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Major Dawn Staley Announcement Made on Wednesday
Major Dawn Staley Announcement Made on Wednesday originally appeared on Athlon Sports. Dawn Staley just concluded another college basketball season with the South Carolina Gamecocks. Staley led South Carolina to the national title game after an incredible run all season. Advertisement While the Gamecocks were in position to earn a national title, they were blown out by the UConn Huskies, capping off their season with an 82-59 loss. After the season, Staley has been quite busy. She recently dropped her newest book, "Uncommon Favor," a memoir of her career as a coach and player. Amid the hype of the book's release, Staley also made an interesting career decision. According to Lulu Kesin, Staley will serve as an analyst on the new CBS Sports WNBA pregame show, debuting on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET. Staley will be on the panel with Sarah Kustok and Renee Montgomery. The South Carolina head coach will also be on the microphone with pregame coverage on July 12, August 9 and Aug. 16. Before losing to the UConn Huskies in the national title game, South Carolina defeated Tennessee Tech, Indiana, Maryland, Duke and Texas in the NCAA Tournament. Advertisement The Gamecocks were led by Joyce Edwards, who posted 12.7 points, 5.0 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game. Chloe Kitts also had a great season for South Carolina, averaging 10.2 points, 7.7 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game. South Carolina women's basketball coach Dawn Staley is stepping into new Lee-Imagn Images Dawn Staley has been with the South Carolina Gamecocks since 2008. Since accepting the head coaching job at South Carolina, Staley has led the Gamecocks to three national titles, seven Final Four appearances, nine SEC regular season championships and nine SEC Tournament titles. Related: Mike Krzyzewski Names Best Player in Duke Basketball History Without Hesitation Related: Big UConn Announcement Turns Heads on Wednesday This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 4, 2025, where it first appeared.
Elle
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Elle
Dawn Staley Wants Women Coaches to Get Paid ‘What We Deserve'
Despite being shy growing up, Dawn Staley was damned if she was going to let it derail her dreams of becoming an Olympian. The exceptionally reserved girl from Philadelphia never wavered in her drive to play professional women's basketball—this at a time when there wasn't even such a thing as the WNBA. She intercepted any bouts of shyness by keeping her eye on the endgame: representing her country at the Olympic Games. The strategy worked: Staley, 55, has four gold medals to her name: three as an athlete and one as head coach for the United States national team (among a myriad of other accolades). 'I am terminally shy but I've had enough experiences to be 'on,' whenever I need to be 'on,'' she says. Being 'on' isn't just about playing or talking game: to Staley, it also means pushing back against anything that doesn't align with her values as a Black woman about the game. 'I don't mind fighting,' she writes in her new memoir, As a girl, Staley resided with her family in the Raymond Rosen housing projects of North Philly, but really, she lived mostly inside her shell. Being the youngest of five children in the row home meant there was a lot of back and forth: everything was a competition and she was always on the losing end. It could be anything from who got into the bathroom first in the mornings to who got hold of the phone in the evenings. 'I may have been born competitive, but my environment definitely added fuel to that fire,' she writes. Because she ranked at the bottom of the family hierarchy, the introvert in her didn't mind being invisible: 'I was intensely withdrawn.' Courtesy of Dawn Staley Staley in the sixth grade. Staley didn't catch her personality from her mother. Estelle Staley was a sociable, active member of the community. 'My mother loved people,' she says. 'She did anything for anybody—to a fault. People would take advantage of her and she knew it. But she allowed it to happen because she made that choice. Her heart was in the right place.' On home turf, however, nobody got past Estelle. If a child whose turn it was that week to do the dishes didn't do them by the time she returned from her job of cleaning houses, the dishes were literally dropped to the floor one by one. That meant twice the amount of cleanup for the culprit. The confining nature of her chaotic, crammed household compelled Staley to express herself, at least physically, elsewhere: on the local basketball court. 'Basketball was me talking,' she writes in Uncommon Favor . 'I was free. There was room for me to breathe…To release the person I longed to be.' As a die-hard Philadelphia 76ers fan, 'The only thing I really looked at growing up was the NBA,' she tells me. 'I only dreamt of things I saw.' Observing Hank Gathers in the flesh fueled the 11-year-old Staley's growing obsession. Gathers, the late college basketball player for the Loyola Marymount Lions in the West Coast Conference (WCC) where he was named Player of the Year, grew up in the same housing projects as Staley. 'We used to go to the same rec center,' she explains. The 6-foot-7 star player would play hard but was soft on the kids who came in the way of their games, primarily Staley. 'If Hank and his friends were playing on one side of the court, I would run out on the side of the basket that they weren't playing,' she says. 'But they would hurry up and come back down in a fast break situation so I would try and scoop my ball off the court before I interrupted their game.' Courtesy of Dawn Staley Staley with her mother at a mural dedication. Gathers, who would collapse on the college court at 23 years old from a heart condition ('He took his last breath doing the very thing he loved,' Staley recalls), took notice of Staley's own talent and would persuade the other guys to let her play with them. Joining the big boys at the rec center made Staley naively believe she could one day play with the big boys in the NBA. 'When I'm growing up I'm working towards being a point-guard for the Sixers. As I got older, I realized that wasn't in the cards, so then what was the next thing? It was something I could see other women doing and that's where my goals of going to college and playing basketball at that level came from,' she says. 'It gave me a path to follow and it helped me to stay focused away from the many distractions that the Raymond Rosen projects presented.' Staley started to see proof that she was on the right path as early as in eighth grade: a letter of interest from Dartmouth College. In retrospect, she can see that the letter was simply an invitation to a basketball camp—one of hundreds sent to students all over the country—but at the time, Staley saw it as the first step on the ladder to her destiny. One thing led to another. During a summer-league tournament game at Temple McGonigle Hall while she was a student at FitzSimon's Junior High School, Staley scored 25 points with 10 assists and 10 steals. John Chaney, the men's basketball coach was so impressed with her game that she was invited to join his weeklong co-ed basketball camps. There, she found herself in new company among peers who were determined to play. Staley did more than that: She pushed her team to go harder and be better. The meeting with Chaney would become even more momentous: Years later she would coach alongside him when she took over the Temple Owls as coach. 'I realized I had to 'play ball' to play ball.' Because winning was all-important, she had no problem being coachable. Getting along with the girls on her team was a whole other story. As she transitioned from competing with boys to playing on all-female squads, Staley felt her female peers were disappointing. They were so much softer than her: Staley's passes were harder and she'd roll her eyes at the girls who would wince and shake their hands from the sting of the ball when it was passed to them. She felt they weren't as serious about the game as she was. 'I'd been forged on the courts of the projects, going up against all the dudes…I had to prove myself and be exponentially better just to get an invite to the party,' she writes. Uncommon Favor: Basketball, North Philly, My Mother, and the Life Lessons I Learned from All Three Now 10% Off Soon enough, she started playing with girls in her own league. When she was in her early teens, Philadelphia broadcasting agent Sonny Hill invited Staley to play in his regional competitions. The girls she came up against were made of the same mettle she was—likewise legends in the making: Yolanda Laney, Linda 'Hawkeye' Page, and Marilyn Stephens-Franklyn. She also joined travel teams (Estelle forced Staley's older sister, Tracey, to drive her to all the games) which gave her a feel for all kinds of different venues and crowds, helping her to become a well-rounded player. By the time she started high school at Murrell Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School, Staley was already considered one of the best players in the country, averaging 34 points per game. Her team didn't lose one game her whole high school career and she won the title of national high school player of the year. During this rise, Staley was inundated with hundreds of letters from colleges as well as solicitations from recruiters. The University of Virginia and Pennsylvania State University, both of which had been courting her since eighth grade, were the top contenders on her list. She ended up going with a scholarship from UVA because she didn't want to go to a school that had already won a national championship. 'I wanted to be part of building a legacy.' Courtesy of Temple University Staley coaching on the sidelines at Temple University. In college, her head was too much in the game. Other aspects of her life suffered as a result: she was antisocial and her grades were far from great. This put her scholarship in peril and when she was summoned to the dean's office, where Debbie, her coach, told her to charm and connect with him so that she wouldn't be kicked out. Staley couldn't even make eye contact. After some pleasantries, the dean told her she would have to start conforming to the way things were done at UVA. It didn't seem to matter that she was a once-in-generation point-guard. The North Philly in her did not take to the word conform. She was not about to 'kiss the asses of these preppy white people, these elitist jerks.' In retrospect, she says that word choice is everything. Had the dean used the words 'adjust' or 'pivot,' Staley might have been more receptive in the moment. 'But this was 1989. Coaches and deans…weren't amending their vernacular to avoid offending kids. It was a different time. Nobody cared if you were insulted or hurt,' she writes. Debbie had to do some major damage control. Still, Staley knew she had to get it together. 'I realized I had to 'play ball' to play ball.' When she graduated in 1992, the opportunities for women to play ball were limited. Staley remembers a male counterpart who was the men's 1992 college player of the year: he had signed a deal with the NBA for $80 million. Staley, on the other hand, was working in retail folding shirts, earning a couple hundred dollars a week. There was no WNBA and she had bills to pay: 'I was surviving,' she says. She was already feeling disheartened: a few months prior she had gone to an Olympic training center to compete for a position on the women's basketball team. She thought she had it, but she was cut from the list. The decision seemed political. 'I couldn't say anything but my bubble was talking huge,' she says. 'They told me I was too short and that I didn't have enough international experience. Yeah well, they put somebody on the team who was shorter than me and who had never gone overseas to play. But here's the thing: I can say it's political and do nothing, or I can do something about it.' Staley couldn't do anything about her 5-foot, 5-inch height, but she could build herself up overseas. While she waited for a position to open up, she continued at her retail job and kept herself basketball-ready, but she also worked on developing better mental strength and getting rid of residual anger. Finally five months later, a shot at a position in Segovia, Spain opened up. 'I didn't want to look back. I wanted to share that space and pour that energy into my players.' Three years of playing abroad brought just as many gold medals—one of them her first Olympic gold in the Atlanta 1996 Games. She remembers practically swaying with excitement as the Olympic medal staff went down the U.S. team line. As they were about to adorn the medal around her neck, Staley couldn't contain herself: 'Give me mine! Give me mine!' she repeated over and over. 'It was so North Philly of me,' she recalls with amusement. Later, she would give that gold medal to her mother. A couple of weeks after winning, Staley remembers feeling a depression sinking in. The world expected her to be celebrating, but she didn't want to move her body even one iota. She had achieved her lifelong dream, so now what? The competitive edge seemed to evade her. Staley's American Basketball League (ABL) coach was supportive and encouraged her to take some time for herself instead of getting right back to training, despite the pressure to do so. Staley has always remembered that kindness and has made it her mandate to pay it forward. The game went on. A couple of years after the WNBA was created, Staley was selected in the 1999 draft—she would become a five-time WNBA All-Star—playing mostly for the Charlotte Sting but also for the Houston Comets. Not long after, she also became head coach at Temple University. Two more Olympic golds were added to her arsenal: Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004. Courtesy of Dawn Staley Staley in Philadelphia with her Olympic gold medal. Staley retired from the WNBA in 2006 because of an insistent stirring inside her to make the full jump into coaching. 'I actually played and sacrificed my body one year longer than I should have so that I could get basketball out of my system,' she says. 'I didn't want to look back. I wanted to share that space and pour that energy into my players.' Staley has been head coach for the South Carolina Gamecocks since 2008. In 2021, she got her fourth Olympic gold, this time as head coach of the US team. Originally, coaching wasn't in the plan for her career. 'It wasn't even a thought,' she says. '[But] I wanted to be a dream merchant for young people,' she says. 'We've won national championships; what that represented was so much more than another player or another former athlete. It was more of a Black woman who had never been a head coach of an Olympic team: It is that representation of being the first to open doors for others to walk through.' 'We have to continue to scream at the top of our lungs to get what we deserve.' When her team took home the gold, Staley paid homage to Carolyn Peck—the first Black coach to win an NCAA women's championship. 'Carolyn gave me a piece of her net two years before we won as a token,' she says. 'It was her way of saying: 'You're close, you're close. This piece of nylon is going to be a ray of hope for you. When you're thinking that you can't do it, touch on this piece of nylon and know that someone who looks like you has done it.'' This past January, Staley became the highest-paid coach in women's basketball history when she agreed to a $25.25 million-dollar contract extension to the 2029-30 college season. 'There should be more sitting where I sit,' she says. 'Female coaches who have served our game for decades haven't been paid what they're worth. When you step out there for equal pay, it's going to come against resistance.' Any timidity—terminal or not—has no place at the table: 'We have to continue to scream at the top of our lungs to get what we deserve.' Related Stories
New York Times
22-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Q&A: Dawn Staley says Charlamagne tha God convinced her to write her memoir
South Carolina coach Dawn Staley's book 'Uncommon Favor,' a memoir in which Staley recounts growing up in North Philadelphia, playing college and pro hoops, and coaching in the college ranks, was released this week. The Athletic read an advanced copy and chatted with Staley about the book. (Editor's note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.) Advertisement What made now the right time to write this book? People have been asking me to write a book for a very long time. Over the past three years, I've thought more about it. It got birthed from when I was on 'The Breakfast Club' when we won in 2022. (Host) Charlamagne Tha God, he asked me if I wanted to write a book. I gave the old, 'Yeah, one day I will write a book.' But he just kept following up and kept following up. When we won last year, I was just like, 'This might be it.' We had talked about maybe doing it, but it was a soft yes. It wasn't like a hard yes, let's get it done. Once we had the type of year that we had last year, I was like, 'This might be the perfect time, because we went undefeated with the unlikeliest team. Something is special about this moment in my life, and it might be a good time to just kind of bear down and get it done.' It was his persistence, from somebody that has written books. He's young and relatable. I thought it was coming from a real good place, and I think he believed in it. He believed in my story. I don't even know if he knows all of it, but he knows enough with his connection of being from South Carolina. He knew enough to know that this book might be something that could be special. In the book, you write that after the 1996 Olympics, you delayed your arrival to the (American Basketball League's) Richmond Rage training camp by two weeks. You wrote that you were drained of your competitive drive. What was it about achieving that particular goal that brought you to that place? Did that experience change the way you approached other longtime goals? That feeling was a one-off. This specific situation, I was probably a little just mentally, physically, just fatigued of the journey of getting to that point. I got cut in 1992, and then what I had to do between '92 and '95 up into the national team trials, it was, 'Bear down. Get it done. Don't be denied the next time that you are in a situation where you can make an Olympic team.' It was basically four years of just all-out preparation. Looking back on it, I don't know if I took too many days off. It was the only goal that I had left from my childhood that I achieved, and then two weeks later, I gotta go try to get myself up to do this again? And I didn't share that with anybody. I didn't share that with my teammates and my parents and my siblings. I took that on myself. Advertisement Now that I'm a coach and I know how much mental health is a big part of our players' lives, and they have so many challenges, and sometimes their equilibrium is shaken. So, I can look back on that as, oh, that's kind of what my players go through. That's how I help them through different situations that they're faced with that have nothing to do with basketball. I was singularly focused on being an Olympian and being a gold medalist. I didn't have a goal of being a two- or three-time Olympian. That wasn't the goal. The goal was one. Let me get one. Sometimes losses are the things that really drive you to not feel that way again. But that never happened again. If it happened again, if it happened now, it's been 30 years so I think I'd be better equipped to handle it instead of just not wanting to pick up a basketball. You write a lot about your Olympic experiences and challenges as a player when Team USA won its first gold medal in women's basketball. What would you have done differently from what Tara VanDerveer did as the coach of that team? And what would you keep the same? I don't want this to be a battle. Tara and I, we're very different in our coaching styles. I would've communicated a lot more with everybody. It could've (still) been as hard as it was, but I'd let you know it'll be hard. We got conditioned for it to be hard, just because we had to do it every day. It wasn't like she was telling us it was going to be hard. … But I like to let people know that it's going to be hard. I feel a little bit better when I get on the plane and the pilot says, 'Hey, we gonna have a rough one' versus letting you be surprised. I'm not as scared. But if he just says, 'Hey, we've got clear skies and we're about to take off. Should be a short flight,' but the entire flight is full of turbulence, now I'm scared out of my wits because you didn't mention any of that. So, it's probably more like that. But with Tara, she had to do it her way. All who've sat in that head coaching chair of an Olympic team, we've got to do it our way, because if we lose, we're going to be the ones that take the brunt of everybody's criticisms. Advertisement I was a talker. I was a communicator when I (coached in) the Tokyo Games. I talked to younger players and let them know, 'Hey, this might not be your Olympic Games,' meaning you might not play a whole lot. You might not play any, but I just want you to learn in case you become an Olympian again. If you get in, great. If you don't get in, just continue to learn. Just being completely honest with them. You've talked a lot about your mom, Estelle, who's one of the people you dedicated this book. You also write a bit about your dad, Clarence, and how he wasn't as outwardly supportive of your basketball career as a player. When you became a coach at Temple, he began sitting in the very top of the rafters for your games, and after he passed, you learned that he kept a box of your press clippings about your teams' successes. How do you think it would've changed you if you had more of that outward support throughout your childhood and early coaching days from him? I don't like comfort, if you know what I mean. I need some antagonists. I need it. And I think my parents were the perfect balance. My mom was really supportive. My dad was supportive in his own way. It wasn't how I envisioned support, but it was everything that I needed. He was a traditional man — there was a place for women. He wanted my mother to cook. He wanted my mother to fix his plate. He wanted my mother to do all those things, right? And he wanted girls to wear skirts and play with other girls. And I was probably the complete opposite of what he envisioned a little girl should be. And I get that. I still harbor these ill feelings when he said no, that I couldn't go to this AAU competition. It's the losses that stick with you really for a long time. So, I think he made me a better player because of it. Everybody comes into your life for a reason, for a season. I think his reason was what he thought of girls and women, whether we like it or not, whether I liked it or not. But he made me work harder for the things that I was able to do. Your mom was full of Estelle-isms that you think about to this day. Are there any in particular that you use the most with your teams? They can't handle my mother's -isms. It was old school, like cut your throat. If something was hard, my mother would say, 'Tough titty.' Like, 'Let's move on.' If there were something that you didn't believe that she could do, she would (use a saying) I use on other people, not necessarily my team. The other day, I went to get some furniture. I drove my truck and got a refrigerator, stove, dishwasher and microwave. And they were like, that's not gonna fit on this truck. I take stuff out of the box, and everything fit like Tetris on the truck. And I said, 'Excuse me. If I tell you the moon is made of cheese, bring your crackers.' Dawn Staley of @GamecockWBB is motivated and inspired by her late mother. — espnW (@espnW) March 24, 2018 When you recounted your time at Temple, you wrote that eight years in, you realized you needed to go somewhere else for a chance to win a national title. A lot has changed in college sports since then. When you think about the number of programs that can win a national title now versus then, how much smaller or larger is the pool? It's smaller. I do think, time-wise, it's going to open up probably quicker than the path that we had to take from Temple to South Carolina. It'll be a shorter runway because of NIL and the ability to build a team overnight. But even then, it's still hard. You can close the gap when it comes to the amount of talent, but you still gotta coach the talent, still gotta create chemistry. You still gotta do all those things that were built over several seasons. Advertisement Something that's harder is there's so much other stuff that you have to deal with. The money piece is a real thing. The NIL, the revenue-share piece is a real thing that we didn't really have to deal with. We just had to deal with playing time, fit, making sure the family is OK. All of those things still have to play a part, but the money part is real, and you have to make a concerted effort. It's a daily thing that you have to deal with much like all the other stuff that you have to deal with like building chemistry, practicing hard, all these things you have to deal with. Then you got the money piece that can destroy everything that you've built, because it's super transactional now. So, it's smaller. (Photo of Dawn Staley: Erick W. Rasco / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Dawn Staley Sends Clear Message About Caitlin Clark & Angel Reese Controversy
South Carolina women's basketball coach Dawn Staley was a guest on "The View" on May 20 to talk about her new book, "Uncommon Favor." During her appearance, one of the hosts asked her about the Caitlin Clark-Angel Reese controversy. Staley had a clear message in response. One of the hosts asked Staley what she thinks of the controversy surrounding Catlin Clark, a guard on the Indiana Fever, and Angel Reese, a forward on the Chicago Sky. Advertisement "At last week's WNBA game, Caitlin fouled Angel, and then it looked like Angel kind of confronted her afterward," the host started. "And after that she faced a ton of racist and online from people. And the WNBA was quick to put out a statement condemning discrimination, racism in all forms. But what do you make of this whole controversy around it?" Staley didn't mince words. "What I make of it is, we need to take the lead of Caitlin and we need to take the lead of Angel," she said. "They've gotten over it. They've said, 'It's done. It's basketball. Let's move on.'" © Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images After encouraging everyone to move on, just like the players have, Staley added: "But, in my book, 'Uncommon Favor,' you can find the answers." Advertisement Staley has been on a tour promoting her new book, which is already getting rave reviews. She also was a guest on "Good Morning America," where she talked about how important it is to be an example for her players. That desire is reflected in a quote from her book where she writes: "I can't ask them to stand up for themselves if I'm sitting down. I can't encourage them to use their voice to effect change if I'm only willing to whisper." Related: Dawn Staley Defends Referees After Gamecocks Win Against Maryland
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Dawn Staley Turns Heads With Major Personal News on Tuesday
South Carolina Gamecocks women's college basketball head coach Dawn Staley has grown to be one of the most well-known names in the NCAA. Staley has helped put South Carolina at the upper-echelon of women's college basketball, having recently led the Gamecocks to the national title game. After the season, as Staley and the Gamecocks look to bounce back from a national title game loss to Geno Auriemma and the UConn Huskies, the South Carolina head coach shared exciting news outside of the white lines. Staley has official released her book, "Uncommon Favor," sharing her life's story. "Great day everyone!" Staley said. "It's here! Head to your favorite bookstore now to grab a copy of Uncommon Favor, a book I poured myself into and hope you enjoy. Let's read or listen it together!" Upon the release of the news, some fans took to social media, sharing their thoughts on Dawn Staley personal update. "Way to go, Coach," said one fan. "Congratulations," said another fan. "Coach, I pre-ordered it on Audible, which I've already downloaded, and my hard copy comes today! Woop! Woop! Let's get it," mentioned one fan. "My book is in route! My other book I'll get next week! Double the love Coach, one to keep and one to give," commented one fan. "Congratulations. Can't wait to pick it up. Congratulations also on the FIBA Hall of Fame," said one fan. "Bought it. Can't wait to get started reading it today," said another fan. Since taking over as the head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks women's basketball team (2008), Dawn Staley has led the program to three national titles, seven Final Four appearances, nine SEC Tournament titles and nine SEC regular season titles.
